


In the echo of a recorded mystery

by laughingpineapple



Category: 4'33" - John Cage (Song)
Genre: 10 is the number of completion, Aftermath, Gen, Mysticism, POV First Person, Silence, Surreal News Report
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:07:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21956380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: As I dozed off during the flight, I dreamt of a place where shadows were not pushed in a corner by the presence of light, but went out on their own to make themselves known, to let people meditate on the comforts of darkness, on indeterminate possibilities, formless potential. The dream (which I now suspect lasted little less than five minutes) ended with the realization that its subject matter would be a good fit for a canvas, but I soon discovered that reality had beaten me to the punch.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2019





	In the echo of a recorded mystery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gammarad](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/gifts).



I was on an intercontinental flight on the day when statistics gave up. One of the unlucky ones, as history would come to call us, barred from the full weight of the miracle by the soft, steady roar of jet engines.

I learned of the silence as soon as I landed. Twitter, Youtube, Instagram spread evidence of the event before news anchors on TV had to struggle to find the words to describe it (others will – poets, I hope, in dark and soundless writing, never to be read out aloud). What could they report? They let the silence play on our screens over and over. A couple of minutes from San Francisco, three from Hong Kong, not a leaf rustling in the middle of the Schwarzwald: for a brief time, wherever it was possible, no matter how improbable, the world had gone silent at once.

The internet raced to find the longest recording of the silence. 4’32’’, Reddit declared after a spell, a Vimeo upload filmed in Milan’s crowded main square by a baffled tourist. Still unaware of the global reach of the phenomenon, and of the relative banality of his coincidences compared to those that had brought silence to concerts, cinemas and train stations, the man explained in the video’s description that he had received six notifications as he recorded the full, all-encompassing silence that had fallen over the _piazza_ and could not for the life of him explain what had made him, self-professed social media addict, put his phone in silent mode for the day. The video was cut to the last moment before a sneeze from the other end of the square, however faint, had broken the enchantment.

Having missed the event itself does not bother me. The silence existed. It is enough. There is something sacred in recordings: they create a discrete space I can enter without the shackles of nostalgia or misplaced competitiveness, as discussions flourished on whether it was luckier to have taken in the silence at night from the window of one’s home, or in the middle of a mall, or by the sea, which was too vast, it seemed, to be touched by this probability collapse, but free for a time from the clamoring of birds and men, and whales down below.

I see no point in such chatter. Nor in the doctrines and hypotheses, nor all the philosophical and literary frameworks they’re trying to nail on this thing, tracing lines from Kafka to Keats to Baudelaire and all the way back to Sophocles. There may be accidental convergences, much like Shakespeare has something to say for every occasion ( _the rest_ , after all, _is silence_ ), but none of these fine fellows were around to witness this. Their silence was different.

The synchronous videos I can appreciate, superimposing the recordings of the same seconds of silence in Paris, in Khenifra, in Balikpapan. Some feel that such triangulations can offer a glimmer into infinity. They may be right. It is not my way.

My winding road to reach that glimmer goes like this: I have listened to thousands of recordings, but I keep coming back to that 4’32’’. It plays over and over again, on my computer, my phone, in my dreams. I long to let it permeate me completely. At times, it almost becomes a physical sensation, the way one slips in dreams – I know I am reaching further and further down through inaction and stillness, until I can almost feel, with the tip of my toes, a deep, vast and wondrous surface, a different state of the self like an uncharted ocean. If I could reach it, it would embrace me and swallow me whole. Every time, unfailingly, the inevitability of that faint sneeze beyond the end of the file tears me away from my destination. And I long for another recording to be found, against all hopes, to give me the time of one more silent heartbeat, one more second...


End file.
